egislature to leave the
rate of interest altogether free. Consequently, a usurer has gotten to
be an impossibility. Were Shund to ask fifty per cent, and more, he
would be entitled to it."

"That is so; for the moment I had overlooked the existence of the law,"
said the manufacturer, somewhat humiliated. "Yet I have not told you
all concerning the usurer. Beasts of prey and vampires inspire an
involuntary disgust or fear. Nobody could find pleasure in meeting a
hungry wolf, or in having his blood sucked by a vampire. The usurer is
both vampire and wolf. He hankers to suck the very marrow from the
bones of those who in financial straits have recourse to him. When an
embarrassed person borrows from him, that person is obliged to mortgage
twice the amount that he actually receives. The usurer is a heartless
strangler, an insatiable glutton. He is perpetually goaded on by
covetousness to work the material ruin of others, only so that the ruin
of his neighbor may benefit himself. In short, the usurer is a monster
so frightful, a brute so devoid of conscience, that the very sight of
him excites horror and disgust. Just such a monster is Shund in the
eyes of all who know him--and the whole city knows him. Hence the man
is the object of general aversion."

"Why, this is still worse, still more astonishing!" rejoined the
millionaire with animation. "I thought our city enlightened. I should
have expected from the intelligence and judgment of our citizens
that they would have deferred neither to the sickly sentimentalism
of a bigoted morality nor to the absurdity of obsolete dogmas. If
your description of the usurer, which might at least be styled
poetico-religious, is an expression of the prevailing spirit of this
city, I shall certainly have to lower my estimate of its intelligence
and culture."

The leader hastened to correct the misunderstanding.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Greifmann! You may rest assured that we
can boast all the various conquests made by modern advancement.
Religious enthusiasm and foolish credulity are poisonous plants that
superannuated devotees are perhaps still continuing to cultivate here
and there in pots, but which the soil will no longer produce in the
open air. The sort of education prevailing hereabout is that which has
freed itself from hereditary religious prejudices. Our town is blessed
with all the benefits of progress, with liberty of thought, and freedom
from the thraldom of a dark, designi